Presidential Popularity

The Newsprint

I mentioned in my last post that explanations for policy failure focused on Presidential popularity are hopelessly confounded. Here's an example from TNR's John B. Judis. Judis discovers that a basically exogenous variable (unemployment) tracks well but imperfectly with Obama's popularity decline until around October, at which point unemployment plateaus but Obama continues getting less popular.

Judis then goes fishing for an explanation and comes up with a grab bag: lack of focus on the economy, tactical mistakes on health care, etc. But he finally settles on a pretty hopeless explanation, namely that Barack can't relate to Middle America.

This is patently ridiculous. Largely Republican states in Middle America were a big reason that Obama won the Democratic nomination. Moreover, he faired well in many of those Middle American states that he lost in 2008, at least relative to recent Democratic candidates. The idea that his personality is ill-suited to that cultural and electoral terrain is banal and simply unsupported by the evidence.

Finally, the very point of Judis's argument is that Obama's political problem is now nationwide. Why, then, focus on the Republican heartland for evidence? Surely, if one wanted to present evidence that Obama and the Democrats are in trouble, one would look to traditionally Democratic states across the map to indicate eroding electoral fortunes. A quick look over to RCP indicates that Barbara Boxer is running within single digits of the largely unknown Republicans battling for their party's nomination. Also, the generic Congressional ballot is indicating a real sea change toward the GOP.

I'm driving at two points. First, that a simple plateau in the unemployment rate does not mean that unemployment suddenly ceases to be the principle source of frustration for prospective voters. A plateaued unemployment rate does not mean that joblessness has stabilized. Indeed, the unemployment rate can be a poor measure of joblessness as it reflects only the percentage of the population actively looking for work but unable to find it. Last week's grim budget report indicated that unemployment only remained stable at 10% because more than half a million Americans simply quit trying to find jobs. That means that the national jobless rate continues to climb, masked by a quirk of the unemployment rate. Here's Cook on the subject.

Additionally, we should expect the effect of unemployment on Obama's popularity to lag, at least somewhat, as voters shift their views on responsibility for unemployment. One year in, many voters are no longer willing to place the unemployment rate squarely at the feet of George W Bush and are instead asking why joblessness has risen seemingly unabated by Democratic legislative efforts including a massive stimulus package. So even assuming that the unemployment rate reflected trends in joblessness (which it doesn't), we would still expect Obama's popularity ratings to sag a bit beyond an unemployment plateau.

Second, that cultural explanations for Obama's policy failures overlook the much more obvious explanations that lay in his policy miscalculations and inept governance. I think I'll save the details of what I view as his major mistakes a year out for a separate post. But for the time being, suffice to say that the evidence for Obama's precipitous slide in popularity tends toward policy and not personality. Indeed, the President remains fairly popular. After all, 53% of the Massachusetts voters that devastated his agenda last night say they still support the President...and his priorities. Does this mean that the minimum 6% of voters who supported Brown but also the President are just crazy? Not necessarily. It suggests instead that Obama has reserves of goodwill (though these are likely deteriorating rapidly) that a competent governor could exploit. I suspect, however, that he won't.

Does Obama have a political problem? Sure. Has he lost the trust of a lot of the "Joe Sixpack" crowd? That seems abundantly clear. But he's lost this unlikely trust because he was able to gain it in the first place, which would be impossible if, as Judis suggests, Obama was "more comfortable in Hyde Park than in Southeast or Northwest Chicago. We're talking about one of the great campaigners of our age here. Even if he has proven to be a mediocre-to-lousy governor, Obama's personal skills are probably the only thing keeping him afloat right now. To project culture war alienation onto his administration is just foolish. It's the economy, stupid.

This has a couple of implications for Republican leaders. First, don't count the President out yet. While he can't get other Democrats elected, he remains personally popular even among the independents who are increasingly swayed to the right by the Tea Party movement and the willingness of Republicans to turn away from the culture wars and toward staunch fiscal responsibility. Second, John Boehner's brilliant strategy of tooth-gritting patience is playing out perfectly. Republicans must continue to test the winds to make sure that they don't become seen by moderates as an obstructionist bloc. But until those winds shift, holding up the Democratic spending agenda while the economy tanks will remain effective strategy. A good faith effort by Republicans to pass some new stimulus (and not just tax cuts) could really sap reeling Democratic momentum and force the Congressional leadership to quash a measure designed to help the middle class. This ain't nihilism folks, it's fighting your way out of the corner.